Devastating Lee development overshadows Phillies' rally

Starting pitcher Cliff Lee walks to the dugout — perhaps for the last time as a Phillie — during the third inning of Thursday’s game against the Nationals. The Phillies announced that Lee had a recurrence of the left flexor pronator strain that sidelined him in May, an injury that will likely end his season, and perhaps lead to early retirement. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

WASHINGTON — For one turn through the Nationals’ order, Cliff Lee looked more like the pitcher he had been for years, throwing sharply and confidently, an unbreakable force on the mound.

Then, one pitch, his first pitch to Denard Span with two outs in the third inning Thursday night, and that was it. Lee walked off the mound in frustration, gestured to the dugout, then to his left arm. Game over. Season over.

Career over? That remains to be seen.

The Phillies managed to rally without Lee and beat Washington, 10-4, at Nationals Park, but the result was an afterthought. The thought of the Phillies having an ace’s career flame out to injury for a second straight year dominated the clubhouse chatter.

Advertisement

“It was very similar symptoms to the last time,” Ryne Sandberg said.

The official diagnosis for Lee was the same issue that sent him to the disabled list for two months — a pronator flexor strain of the left elbow. Both he and the Phillies took a conservative path getting him back to the mound when he went on the disabled list in late May, knowing that the injury often serves as a precursor to a tear of the ulnar collateral ligament, which requires Tommy John surgery to fix and a full year of rehabilitation and relearning for the pitcher who endures it.

Lee said that he believed he shut down his outing before anything catastrophic happened — if missing two more months and being shut down until next spring can qualify as not being catastrophic to a guy who until this year had no arm issues of any kind.

“It’s pretty much the same thing it was before,” said Lee, whose 2014 ends with a 4-5 record, 3.65 ERA and 81 1/3 innings pitched, ending a six-year run during which he averaged 222 innings per season and never threw fewer than 211 innings in any calendar year. “I felt it just barely warming up. Every time I took the mound to throw my warmup pitches, the first pitch I threw, it would be there a little bit and fade away. The last inning I felt it warming up and it never fully went away. It came on a little stronger the last six or seven pitches I threw. It was there every throw.

“I just felt like if I kept throwing something was going to snap. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”

If Lee would need surgery, it could mean he walked off the mound for the last time as a Phillie. His contract, which will pay him $25 million next season, has a $12.5 million buyout for 2016. Considering Lee will be 37 by then — and the fact he hinted late last season that he would contemplate retirement at the end of his contract — the MRI Lee undoubtedly will undergo at some point after seeing a team physician Saturday could come with career-ending repercussions.

For now, Lee is hoping he put on the brakes in time so that rest or a less invasive procedure could spare him a long, arduous comeback. However, he knows what it is like to see an aging pitcher with a lot of mileage try to rediscover something that has left for good. He was, after all, Roy Halladay’s teammate.

“I don’t know how else to go about it,” Lee said when asked if he was hell-bent on getting back on the mound. “I want to do everything I can to make it go away, then come back and pitch, try to be what I am. Go out there, throw strikes, locate pitches and do what I do.

“But if my body doesn’t let me do it, I can’t do it. As much as I want to, it wasn’t allowing that to happen.”